Old school and new school digital business
We live in a very different world; different from that just a few decades ago. There are lots of things that make it different and many of them are focused on technology. But technology is just the surface manifestation of culture and if you want to udnerstand the real change we have to look at the cultural shift.
The computer was made. And then it was made small. Then it was made cheap and cheap made it accessible. So now we all have computers (and by 'we' I mean the over-privilidged western world as there is a very lareg proportion of the world's population that is yet to make or recieve a phone call) Those computers are in effect fast moving calculators designed to 1 and only 1 thing - make copies.
DIGITAL is Zeros and Ones, binary code; this is what it is but this doesnt really tell us about the digital culture. What computers do is use Digital Binary to copy thing, to make infinate perfect copies, copies that can be moved, manipulated and modfied. This is what Computers are and this is what they do.
And its at this point that we hit a very big problem, the sort of problem that draws analogies with elephants sitting in corners. We live in a post industrial revolution society built on the idea of ownership. Everything about our legal and social structures is built on the premise of ownership. Descreet and indivudal ownership and control over 'things'.
Thats all well and good and worked quite well until the computer become small, cheap and ubiquitous with its untold ability to copy. The prevailing culture of 'ownership' sort to do what it had always done, sell the ownership of 'things'. So this culture sold Computers and because there was a great desire to sell lots of computers the great engines of marketing and salesmanship went into overdrive and we were all duely convinved that we MUST GET OURSELVES A DIGITAL LIFESTYLE AND GET IT NOW.... So we did.
The problem is that those selling the 'digital lifestyles' and employing the methodologies of ownership to sell this 'thing' negelcted to realise the cultural implications of what it was they were selling..... The idea of selling a 'thing' relies on owning the thing and owning the thing' is really about controlling the 'thing'. But the whole system falls in a hole when the 'thing' you are selling has a sole purpose of infinately and perfectly copying and distributing other things that you may other wish to own/control/sell.
They told us we had to have the computer and the digital lifestyle but now they seem terribly upset when the thing they sold us is put to use doing exactly what it is designed for - copy, alter and distribute - three things that directly undermine the very deffintion of ownership and control...
What a strange world we live in....
But the world doesnt stop, it simply changes culture and it's in this light that this article from WIRED entitled '
FREE! Why $0.00 is the Future of Business" presents an insight into the new cultural directions of how we think about economics, ownership, capaitalism in light of this much changed world.
Posted at 01:00AM Apr 07, 2008
by Mike Jones in industry comment |
